Athletics Claim Marcus Walden Off Waivers From Blue Jays

The Athletics have claimed righty Marcus Walden off waivers from the Blue Jays and optioned him to Triple-A, the club announced. Walden was designated yesterday, and presumably hit the waiver wire immediately.

Walden, 25, has worked mostly as a starter in the minors, but had been throwing in relief at Triple-A to start the 2014 campaign. At Double-A last year, he worked to a 3.71 ERA in 162 1/3 innings, with 4.9 K/9 against 2.8 BB/9.

Toronto paid the cost of losing Walden's rights after some odd roster maneuvering. The club opened the year with Jeremy Jeffress on the active roster and then designated him with the intention of calling up Chad Jenkins to take his place. Jenkins was initially announced as being recalled, but that was not possible because he had not yet been on optional assignment for ten days. Walden took Jenkins's place, but that meant that he had to be exposed to waivers when a 40-man spot was needed.

Because trades can always go wrong, players get injured, and an all-in push can fall at the hands of an unfavourable division or small sample size in the playoffs, I’ve never advocated for firing GMs as much as some do. This is especially true for AA; he’s an intelligent manager who capitalizes on opportunities when he’s given them. Being handcuffed by ownership is not a reflection of intelligence or negotiating ability.

But truthfully, as small an issue as losing Marcus Walden might be to the Jays, this is the kind of issue that someone should be disciplined, or even fired over. Forgetting to place someone on option before recall demonstrates a fundamental incompetency. This is either a misunderstanding of how baseball works, or a lack of managerial organization.

Sure, it’s just Marcus Walden – but when you’re in charge of the management of a nine/ten figure corporation, you can’t “forget” to option a player, especially when many MLBTR readers wouldn’t have forgotten that. If an HR executive at IBM “forgot” to file a fellow exec’s paperwork, and they get snatched up by HP – that executive would be relieved the next day.

Come on, AA, you’re better than this. You’ve been a guy that has skillfully exploited the rules in the past, don’t let yourself get fired by missing the small stuff.

You’re right of course, I’m commenting on the series of transactions here. As in, the mistake was specifically regarding the Jenkins transaction – but the consequence of that mistake led to the Walden move which may not have otherwise happened.

They made the decision to designate Jeffress thinking “this is perfect, we’ll call up Jenkins to take his place, worry-free”, forgetting the need to place Jenkins on option. In a scramble to replace Jeffress, for whom the transaction had already been made, and Walden being the only suitable choice, they were forced to put a skilled young player in a vulnerable, unprotected position which they hadn’t anticipated (or just forgot) when they initially made the Jeffress move.

I wouldn’t over-react. Just last offseason, Beane traded for a player from the red sox and immediately placed him on waivers. Shortly thereafter, the red sox claimed said player off waivers and ended up with both the player they traded for and the player they traded away. Beaned is still considered a pretty good GM by most, and you never know if these deals were executed by there GM or one of their assistants. It’s true that my anecdote was more related to a misjudgment of the market than a blatant mistake, but the results were them same. Minor leaguers are swiped all the time, even from competent GMs.

These types of moves, I think, are actually lower down, down to a scout or two vouching for a guy they saw. He’s from Fresno, CA, so it stands to reason somebody in the organization saw him many times as he developed and always liked him, but weren’t in a position before to grab him. Ryan Cook and Jesse Chavez are both from central CA and also seem to have been on the A’s radar for many years before they were acquired in what seemed at the time like minor moves.